Importance

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Abstract

An embodiment of the present invention is a system for automatically pointing a directional antenna. The system comprises two GPS antennas mounted at horizontally opposed extremities of the directional antenna, the placement is such that the GPS antennas lie on a line having a normal vector approximately parallel to a boresight of the directional antenna. The outputs from the GPS antennas are downconverted to a measurement frequency and differentially phase compared for each of a plurality of radio visible GPS satellites. A measurement controller that receives the phase comparisons. A navigation computer receives measurements from the measurement controller and uses a microprocessor to calculate the GPS latitude and longitude and the attitude angles of the pair of GPS antennas. A servo points the directional antenna at a particular target communications satellite, based on the computed azimuth, elevation, latitude, and longitude, as provided by the navigation computer. One of these servos is used to move the GPS antennas in roughly a circle to average out multipath effects to improve accuracy and to reduce integer ambiguities.

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First Claim